Chamber and committees

Thank you—that is useful. The whole exercise is highly politicised, of course, but given those confines, the report is a relatively technical part of informing what will be a much more politicised review.

David Eiser mentioned forecast error borrowing. Before we get into a debate about how we decide on the limit for that—whether it should be a cash percentage or whatever—which I presume will come with the review, should we ask what the rationale is for having a limit on forecast error borrowing at all? It is less about a divergence in policy choice and more about correcting for a divergence in technical exercises; it is about correcting for error rather than for a divergence in choice. What purpose does a limit serve when the issue is simply to do with forecast error corrections?

Yes, I think that we are a deeply asymmetric unitary state.

I will leave it there, convener.

I will move on to my other question on borrowing—I direct it to David Phillips, as he mentioned this issue earlier in referring to the report that your institutions recently published on discretionary resource spending borrowing powers. The report recommended that the Scottish Government should be given some limited powers for discretionary borrowing, and said that the rationale for those powers being limited is an equity issue, as there is no England-only borrowing regime.

Can you expand a little on that rationale? The UK Government is de facto the English Government when it comes to areas such as health and local government, and it has an unfettered ability to borrow and spend in those areas if it wishes to do so. What is the rationale for granting the Scottish Government a discretionary borrowing power but having it limited for the purposes of equity within the union?

Thank you, convener. I have one question on the process, and then a couple on policy if we have time to get through them.

First, on the process itself, there has been a bit of confusion in the public discourse on the independent report and the review. I say “public discourse”; it is not as though a huge number of people have been engaging in this conversation beyond those of us who are participating in this meeting, but some have. Some folk are mixing up their terms when they reference the independent report rather than the review.

The report itself will not make recommendations. To an extent, it is simply an evidence-gathering exercise. I would be interested to hear the witnesses’ thoughts on exactly what they think the most desirable outcome is for the independent report. What purpose is it trying to serve, given that it is not its purpose to make recommendations?

I direct that to David Bell in the first instance.

You have clarified this morning that various portfolios are contributing to the £200 million that you announced last week for business and self-isolation support. Can you confirm the breakdown in that respect? Is the contribution from portfolios coming from projected underspends, or have other priorities been paused or cancelled so that the money can be redeployed?

My apologies; I did not phrase my question very well. What I am trying to confirm is whether you still intend to use that money for the same purpose as you had planned, but at an earlier date, or whether it will now be deployed differently from how you had previously planned for it to be used in the budget.

Going back to Liz Smith’s questions on the Auditor General’s report on the underspend in 2021 that was carried over into 2021-22, I know that you have explained the reasons behind that and the purpose of doing it, but to what extent do you expect a similar underspend to be carried forward from this year into the 2022-23 budget?

I apologise for the fact that I had to step away from the meeting for a couple of moments to take a call, convener. If any of the questions that I am about to ask have been covered by a colleague, please interject and tell me to check the Official Report later.

Cabinet secretary, in response to John Mason’s question, you clarified that the initial £220 million that was announced last week by the UK Government in response to omicron was money that the Scottish Government had budgeted for in next year’s budget. Was that committed to other priorities, or is it all being used for the same Covid-specific purpose, meaning that it is being spent in exactly the same way as planned, just earlier than intended?

Is a breakdown of where the money is coming from available anywhere, or could it be provided to the committee?

On a completely different issue, I note that, for the first time, the public sector pay policy includes a commitment to piloting a four-day working week, which I know will be welcomed by a number of unions. On the face of it, there is no immediate significant financial impact from the principle of the four-day working week or reducing the number of hours worked in a week for a similar level of pay, but how are you accounting for the pilot projects in the coming year’s pay policy?